Methods and apparatuses of the aforementioned type are known from the prior art. In general, contact sensors installed in the bumper of the vehicle are used for the detection of pedestrian accidents. Systems based on two or more acceleration sensors are in wide use. Systems are also known that operate with a pressure tube sensor. In both cases the impact of an object in the relevant region of the bumper results in a signal rise within the detecting sensor. The amplitude of the signal rise is dependent here inter alia on the mass and the speed of the impacting or incident collision object.
From the published patent application DE 103 46 622 A1, moreover, an apparatus of the aforementioned type is known, with which a surroundings sensor is provided that monitors the surroundings of the vehicle and in the event of potential collision objects checks whether this is a pedestrian. The pedestrian protection measures are then triggered depending on whether the collision object is actually a pedestrian. In practice however, it can occur on the one hand that despite widely developed algorithms for checking whether the collision object is a pedestrian, a faulty decision can be made that would result in incorrect triggering of the pedestrian protection measure. On the other hand, it can occur that a pedestrian is not recognized as such, for example as the necessary trigger threshold within the algorithm was not exceeded. This can for example be the case if the pedestrian is a small child or the pedestrian is only partly incident on a relevant region of the bumper. The simple decision as to whether it is a pedestrian or not, and based thereon to decide to trigger pedestrian protection measures, can therefore be insufficient in individual cases.